Ser Hidalgo

To be an good artist--or scientist--requires that we have time alone to think
and daydream. I call someone who allows themselves this time "hidalgo." To explain,
I need to tell some history.

As a reward for participation in the reconquest of Spain from the Moors and
later the "discovery" and conquest of the New World, a number of people were given
the opportunity to become lower-level nobility.

To prove their worthiness, one of the requirements was that applicants had
to show that they had never engaged in demeaning labor. Applicants sometimes had
to get affidavits from familiars who could attest that the applicant (and often
their fathers and grandfathers) had never done a lick of work. Imagine being proud
of a resume showing no work history!

Manual labor, dirt, and sweat is not the domain of an honorable aristocrat.
Even clean professionals like lawyers and non-royal scribes were viewed as too
pedestrian to become nobility. Many wealthy applicants, however, were able to
buy their way into a "clean" work history. "Honorable" applicants were given the
title "Hidalgo", which is a shortening of "hijo de algo" (son of something). Many
Spanish-speaking people still carry this title as their last name.

Cedar Creek Mudflat
oil on canvas

What I take from the term "hidalgo" isn't the absence of physical labor; it's
the luxury of having time to daydream and wonder. Having a normal job or a career
often interferes with intuition, discovery, and invention because it monopolizes
our time and energy. To be creative, we must be hidalgo, someone with time to
imagine.